


the long summer

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Yuletide 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 21:50:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summer in the city and Sherlock Holmes can't seem to get it right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the long summer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Greens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greens/gifts).



> I can't do proper case!fic even if my life depended on it but I really loved the idea of Sherlock + New York in your prompt. Hope you like it, dear recipient.

**[one]**

He doesn't know how long he follows the suspect.

He looks around (he doesn't exactly want the suspect to lead him into a dead end or a trap) and realizes Brooklyn has started to look unfamiliar by now. This is the part of the city where you buy pizza slices and they come in white paper bags. Remnants of adult theaters and everybody in cigarettes breaks; Court Street and kids-filled corners and things Sherlock had only read about in coming-of-age novels.

Summer is just beginning and Sherlock can taste the heat in the air. He is not ready for it. He was not expecting it to be this bad. Here summer is a collection of clichés about kids jumping and dancing around open fire hydrants. And Sherlock is out of breath. He follows the suspect.

After a couple of minutes running (though they do feel like hours) Sherlock realizes it's only inertia that keeps him on the move. His legs are somewhere between pain and indifference, but they no longer belong to him.

He is going to defeated, he realizes.

The other guy is fitter, faster. He makes a mental note to start going with Joan on her morning jogs – speed _should_ be a crucial part of his abilities and he hasn't thought about it quite like that until right now. Right now that it hurts to draw a breath and there is a sharp pain in his left side and in his thighs.

He loses the man when Sherlock steps down the sidewalk and twists his ankle upon a slight irregularity on the road. He breaks the fall with his hands but it's already too late to recover, the chase is done for. The palms of his hands burn. He still has time to watch as the (alleged) murderer disappears behind a corner. When the police catches up with Sherlock he is still a vague retinal trace in the peripheral vision. He stays down when he realizes standing up means having to deal with the pain under his ribcage.

`Hey, are you okay?´ Gregson asks in that raspy yet concerned voice of his.

Sherlock rubs his left knee in reply. It's not so much the pain as the indignity of it all. He wants to apologize to the policemen around him; he should have caught the suspect, it was his fault.

`Perhaps it's time I start carrying some kind of weapon,´ he tells the other man, almost _not_ -joking.

Gregson half-grins at that.

`That's what I need to help me sleep at night. The idea of Sherlock Holmes going around the city with a gun.´

He holds out a hand to help Sherlock stand up, whenever he is ready.

 

 

**[two]**

Joan drags him to an outdoor screening outside the New York Public Library – a _summer thing, roll with it_ , she says, like it's a big mystery, some sort of initiation.

The choice of film is _L'Atalante_ , which –he deduces from Joan's less than helpful summary– is about people living in a canal barge in black-and-white France. He frowns. He hopes there's more to it than just that. He is sure Joan's cinematic tastes are impeccable but the prospect of sitting on the grass with a hundred strangers around him doing nothing but stare at _just one_ screen doesn't particularly excite him. He is not exactly sure why he is indulging her, except that at the time it didn't seem like Joan gave him a lot of choice in the matter.

Fortunately the hot dog vendor in front of the building gets his cart mysteriously (and inexplicably, what with the hundred witnesses and with the it being _a cart_ ) stolen. Lo! Behold! A crime in need of someone to solve it. 

`There's no crime too small, and no evil-doer too humble for a true detective,´ he tells her, trying not to sound like he is mocking her. Instead he sounds like he is lecturing her. She grabs their blanket with a scornful grunt but she follows him.

They never really catch who stole the hot dog cart and Joan makes him watch the movie at home anyway. Not Sherlock's best day on the field, all things considered.

 

 

**[three]**

`Circumstantial evidence,´ Gregson says, tapping his knuckle on his knee, not looking at Sherlock.

`Ah, there's the magic words,´ Sherlock comments.

He can tell by the way Bell tenses his jaw that he is not the only one feeling the frustration. Unlike Bell he is not paid to keep that frustration under wraps.

Sherlock doesn't actually blame the system, or the captain for enforcing it. It's not the system's fault, it's his own. He should have been quicker, smarter, more resourceful.

They leave it at that. Back to square one and the knowledge that there's a killer out there and they can't do a thing about it. Sherlock doesn't handle this particular feeling, impotence, that well. It's better than it used to, which is not really comforting, not right now. But he knows the answer cannot be found fighting the rules, breaking them. The answer is: he has to be quicker, smarter, more resourceful.

It's on him.

He doesn't have a ride home. Joan is at home working on another case and he feels too tired to ask Gregson or call a cab.

He walks instead. 

Even at night the heat is unbearable.

 

 

**[four]**

Joan tells him about the new case.

`We are still a detective agency and not a charity, right? In case I missed so –´

`She's a neighbor, Sherlock.´

`When I was working for Scotland Yard nobody would think of asking me to find a lost cat.´

`It's a Bengal cat. It's actually very valuable. And anyway I thought there was no crime too small or no–´

Sherlock makes that sound particular for the times when he loses an argument with Joan.

`Still. Scotland Yard would never...´

Sometimes he thinks about London.

More so lately, when this city has lost any sense of _new_ and _temporary_. It's not home in the strictest sense, but it's not anything else.

New York is slightly more rational in that many streets have numbers and not names and you can always rely on a numerical progression to orientate yourself. London is Ironmonger and Petticoat Lane and Bleeding heart lane. He should be thankful for a handful of avenues. Rational is his style. Should be.

And yet, London is his city and though it still hurts to think of it on a molecular level (his whole body aches with the good memories, shivers with the bad ones) time has dulled the feeling a bit, just a bit, just almost _enough_. Sherlock doesn't do nostalgia but if he did it would be called London.

Perhaps it's the weather.

 

 

**[five]**

`We'll never know how he did it,´ Sherlock mutters. 

`Me, I'm just glad we got to stop him,´ Bell tells him. He picks up the phone to call an ambulance, though they both know it's hopeless.

Sherlock knows the detective is just trying to make him feel better, make himself feel better. He knows Bell, he can read him most accurately by now. For all his practical-minded qualities Detective Bell believes in justice.

The dead man lying on the floor is not justice.

His hands still shake slightly. He is grateful he is not allowed to carry firearms; grateful Bell was the one who had to make that split-of-a-second decision – he is scared of dying but the idea of having to kill somebody scares him even more (though a part of him knows he could, if it came down to it, if it came down to a man's life or his own).

`It was a locked room and now we'll never know how he did it,´ he says, not sure if he wanted it out loud or not.

He wants to tell Bell he is not being callous – he actually _knows_ the mystery of it all is not important. But to mourn the loss of knowledge is easier than to mourn the loss of lives. It's a necessary detachment.

Sherlock looks down. The white of the hotel's carpet, with its 76th street expensive lushness, is now sprinkled with little dots of red. He feels sick. It's never nice seeing a dead body, it's even worse watching the process that led him to that state. The man has managed to best Sherlock and now he is a thing, a dead thing, and Sherlock will never know.

 

 

**[six]**

`You know you don't _have_ to solve _every_ case. That's just arrogance.´

Sherlock snorts.

What's the point of being one of the greatest minds in the world (not that he'd put it in those exact words) if you struggle to keep a good record? Four of their last five cases have been left unresolved or they were dropped by the client.

It's been a long, bad summer.

`If we don't solve a case soon people will start posting bad reviews on–´

`Yes, Sherlock, that's what we should worry about.´

Well he is a bit worried about that. They do have bills to pay, after all. Or Joan has bills to pay because Sherlock doesn't exactly consider knowing how to balance a checkbook vital for the job of an investigator. Perhaps investigator is not the word. But truth-seeker sounds rather silly.

He notices Joan is wearing her oldest, most comfortable sweater. It's laundry day. He hates laundry day. Joan gets weirdly anal about things on laundry days. About things like... well, laundry, specifically. And bathroom cleaning etiquette. And recycling. And morality.

Outside the sounds of weekends. People making their way north towards the bridge and the park. Idleness, ignorance, a false sense of security. Sherlock knows what kind of dangers await outside your door. If he is failing to thwart the plans of the monsters lurking in the shadows those people outside, the ones with wicker picnic baskets and designer sunglasses and laughing and pushing a pram and basking in the last good moments of summer sun, they are the ones who will deal with the consequences. Striving to be competent is not just a matter of arrogance – although there is _some_ of that, Sherlock concedes.

Joan catches him looking outside the window.

`It's a streak of bad luck, that's all,´ she says, going from dismissive to pitiful in a heartbeat.

` _A streak of bad luck_ is not a very scientific proposition, specially coming from you, Watson.´

She picks up the laundry basket. Sherlock knows she likes going down to the laundromat, even if it's not strictly necessary (they could replace the washing machine Sherlock ruined with one of his experiments – but perhaps the memory of finding pig's limbs between her shirts plays a factor in Joan's reticence) but it makes her feel connected. Normal.

She is about to leave but then she stops on the door, like she thought better of it.

Sherlock looks up. Joan's glance is imperceptibly gentler (imperceptibly but Sherlock knows better).

`What I mean is – we'll get them next time.´

 

 

**[seven]**

They do get them next time.


End file.
